The One Where I Didn’t Know What To Blog About

Yes, I really didn’t know what the hell I was going to write about this week.

That was just about the only complete thought I had as my exhausted head finally hit the pillow last night.

The night before I write and share my latest post.

The light was off as I jettisoned my clothes and softly pulled back the duvet on my side

The dark that enveloped me was so total it was filled with immeasurable pinpoints of the most vivid orange. How can total darkness actually be so bright?

I shrugged my bared shoulders under the primordial bedcovers, sinking down, down, down into pre-dream logic and re-invention.

In the darkness I was no longer a body, or even an entity. I was pure impression and sensation and what might have been memories if I thought about them.

Time, distance and limits no longer meant anything, or dimensions even.

The part of my brain still dealing in thoughts and concepts knew all this was coming from that spongy brain thing encased in what I call my head, at the top end of my curled up torso and limbs, and we were all lying on a low rectangular bed in a larger rectangular room, in an even larger rectangular house … in a town, in a country … all tangible and finite.

But without visibility, these limits had lost their definition, and I could have been literally anywhere … floating off in the limitless universe, an invisible thought bubble in a pitch-black forever.

Grateful for that extra duvet layer my wife has just added, I felt simultaneously vast and microscopically small in this, my own private universe.

I had been here forever but was just a fleeting blip in time.

Or was my whole existence just an imagining?

How easy would it be to drift off now into the great wide open like a piece of floating coral seeking out its anchoring reef?

On to the next stage of my lifecycle.

Was I awake or was I asleep?

The extra snuggling weight on my torso instantly transported me into childhood beds where we had those things we called blankets.

Layer upon layer of these heavy scratchy, lifeless things that weighed us down but made us warm and safe.

Safe enough to drift off into blameless childhood sleep.

Like I said, I don’t know what to write.

It was so easy when the kids were younger, and things seemed pretty clear. Tiring and demanding, but clear.

Now they are teenagers and things are much more complicated.

I am not free to write what I want when it comes to my family life.

I could so easily bang on and on about my kids and what has been going on, for them and us, but I can’t, not really. At least not directly.

Complicated actually doesn’t begin to cover it.

I am dealing with other complete people, with their own thoughts and feelings, their own take on things.

Besides I am writing to be read and lo and behold, some people read these musings.

And some of them know us. Like, to see – and there are those who know our kids, and us.

That’s why I am uneasy even about sharing the positive things, and why I drift off into allusion and intimation, and deliberate obfuscation.

But not enough for family members to be always easy about what I do write.

Like, for example, I wrote before Christmas about our son’s efforts to find a new football team.

I did not put these posts on my general Facebook page, because I did not want football people locally to know what was going down for us.

But I found out that they had been reading my stuff, or at least had been directed to the stuff that was of interest to them.

Now luckily enough O has joined a really good team, and we are so relieved and so delighted … they came looking for him, and really value him, which is wonderful, but I do not want to compromise him in any way … even writing about how positive it has all been so far.

As for our daughter, all I can say is the whole thing continues to challenge us, right to our very core, and it would be wonderful, in one way, to be free to share stuff with people in similar situations and benefit from their wisdom.

But it’s not really on.

Deep down, I know she is a great kid. Bright and interesting and talented. Beautiful.

But also full of doubt, frustration, and anger. A diffused anger that is hard to contain. For herself and for us.

Like so many teenagers she finds it hard to get out of the way of her own talents and positive qualities, to let them breathe and grow naturally.

And like them all, she will probably succeed and grow into her real beauty despite herself. And us, it seems!

And we, her parents will forgive and forget the bad stuff and move on.

Like all parents and their adult children do, apparently.

But all of this is why I was hoping something would pop into my head that would fill this space and all would be good.

But the truth is I would like to write about nothing else, not really, and so my head would not oblige with a good digressive piece.

Not this week anyway.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed it, try another one! Follow my blog and you won’t miss out again.

Tales From Mamaville

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A newspaper sub-editor for many years, I am now a freelance sub-editor, blogger and content writer. Husband of one and house daddy of two: a feisty and dramatic 16-year-old girl and a bright, resilient football nut of a boy aged 14. My website: endastories.com.

54 comments on “The One Where I Didn’t Know What To Blog About”

There are many barriers in place that prevent us from writing truly raw blog posts. I’m there too. I mean, I know my mom lurks…and although my family doesn’t show interest in reading me at all, they know about the blog so the risk is there. I have to choose carefully what I say, how much I share, and sometimes it feels like….dissatisfaction.

Why is it that when I lie down to sleep, my mind is full of dozens of wonderful, insightful, entertaining thoughts I could write about in my blog, but when I sit down at my laptop, none of them come to the forefront of my mind. I have started keeping a list of topics that interest me. Then when I want to write a blog post, I scan my list to see which one appeals to me. You got a great post from not having anything to write about! 🙂

To quote Ronan Keating ‘You say it best, when you say Nothing at all!’ Sometimes, blogging seems like a minefield. It’s sometimes even harder to write about life when there is a lot going on, when you think of all the things you could write but can’t, you can bypass the things that may be just as interesting that you can.
So glad that O has a good football team.

I’ll leave you to correct the musical attribution – his was far from being the first or best version of that song! But as others have said, you’ve created something really good out of that apparent vacuum in your brain: the mark of a good writer. That question of openness is a difficult one, isn’t it? Somehow we envisage that our words go out into the ether and are not seen by ‘real people’ in our lives, but they are: a message that was brought home to me when my ex-wife told me she had read my posts about my period of illness. Take care, as you always do – the teenage years are difficult for all involved.

Hi Clive … I wouldnt be a Ronan Keating fan so opted to leave well enough alone on that score!! Yeah it was an eye-opener when an unlikely source had been reading my blog. So it is a real factor to deal with. Hope you’re well

Sorry, couldn’t resist – you have more tact and sensitivity than I! That was a timely reminder, as not every reader allows you to retain that degree of anonymity. Tolerable, thanks, hope all’s good with you and yours.

Hi Clive … I wouldnt be a Ronan Keating fan so opted to leave well enough alone on that score!! Yeah it was an eye-opener when an unlikely source had been reading my blog. So it is a real factor to deal with. Hope you’re well

Well, even with nothing to say, you say it so beautifully and eloquently! My brain is awash with so many thoughts when I finally lay down to sleep, but mostly about the coming day/week, how much I have to fit in and what I can and can’t actually afford! I’m lucky if anything blog wise filters its way in at night! And then if it does, I’ve usually forgotten it by morning! #GlobalBlogging

I think it’s the month for it, my last pre-WiHM interviews post (when I was actually writing and not sifting through others’ work 🙂 ) was all about dragging the words and forcing them down. Still, you managed to make it work for you, as usual!

Thanks Fiona … amazing what guff comes out of one’s head sometimes when stuck for something to actually write about … or more accurately here, stuck because of not feeling free to write what I really wanted!!!!

It’s about half past two in the morning where I am. I am reading blogs after a lacklustre and frustrating day with good elements of course but feeling out of sorts. I enjoyed reading you as always and you cheered me with your superb writing so sometimes writing nothing much or not knowing what to write works wonders far away in that endless universe of ours. On the parenting stuff to get back down to challenging Earth, check out charities such as Family Lives some of which have forums if you need support in a safe space. On the blogging and the public front, reminds me of the time a Professor friend of mine remarked how it was odd that I found it so challenging that people read my stuff when there I was putting it out to the whole world via the Internet. Anyway, thanks for doing what you do and doing it so well #AnythingGoes

Thanks, as always, Kate for your wonderful supportive and insightful comments. On the parenting front, the therapeutic route is not so straightforward as our daughter has a lot on her plate with school and exams but is also not yet ready to be able to separate her part in all that goes on. We have to hang in there …

You went in with the notion of having nothing to write about but yet I got so much out of this post of yours. I find that too and therefore I have not been posting twice a week. Sometimes I won’t post anything for the week. However I don’t just want to write for the sake of posting something. I want my readers to get something out of my posts. Stuff that they can relate to – stuff that most of us go through in life. Although my blog is a mishmash of other things as well and not just parenting – I enjoy writing about my family and our experiences. All the best and I enjoy reading your blog posts #itsok

Writing about nothing in particular and still doing it incredibly well – great job Enda. And brutally honest which is what I really like. I think we can all identify with this case of the heavy pen. I know I can. And I like you sometimes lie down at night hoping for inspiration to come to me but sometimes the mind is so clogged up with other things that the inspiring thoughts just can’t break through. I love how you phrase it – that your head would not oblige. I could not have put it better. Thank you for your honesty! #globalblogging

Funny how you manged to pack a whole lot into a post about nothing Enda! I thoroughly enjoyed it none-the-less. It’s true that it can be frustrating at times not being able to say exactly what you would like to say about your family, when you know that potentially they could read it. That’s where I feel that bloggers of small babies and toddlers have an unfair advantage over us. I suppose the alternatives are to write anonymously or in a diary. #tweensteensbeyond

I have gotten this way before. Sometimes I will even have a notion of what I want to talk about then I start writing and it becomes something completely different..Often my writing ends up a fair distance away from what I am thinking in my head but people still read my posts. Go figure. This was a packed post despite not having anything to say 🙂 #GlobalBlogging

Well considering you had nothing to write you did ok really interesting post I always find that as soon as I lie down in bed a million thoughts come into my head and then I go to sleep can’t remember a single one of them in the morning Thanks for linking to #Thatfridaylinky hope to see you next week

I often feel stifled by the fact that my family and friends read my blog because I can’t always say what I want and this can also read to a form of ‘writers block’. Thanks for linking up to the #itok linky.

Love the meanderings of your mind! I have lots of blog post ideas scattered on post it notes and notepads but I still sit there some nights without a clue what to type! Thanks for linking up with #globalblogging

Its hard to write when you’re feeling like you can’t share everything, I know there are aspects of our life that people do not want to be put out there for everyone to read and also photos I won’t put online as they include young relatives that I know would be seen by more than those who know us. It makes it hard to work around it but needs must and all that!
Thank you for sharing this with us at #TriumphantTales. I hope to see you back next week!

i particularly love this post Enda, especially your description of the everythingness/nothingness of drifting off to sleep. Its amazing how much can be communicated when you can’t write about anything. #bloggerclubUk

It’s so hard to write when your brain is filled with thoughts about something that is off-limits to share. I love the imagery of being in your own private universe. I’m rarely awake long enough to experience it though – I’m an asleep-as-soon-as-my-head-touches-the-pillow kinda girl! Haha #blogcrush

I think only you Enda could make writing about nothing such an enjoyable experience. It is definitely a challenge writing about parenting teens and the reason why I went down the anonymous route at their request was so my tales of my trials and tribulations as a parent couldn’t be traced back to them. It is tough though because the truly raw posts are always the ones we all like to soak up and mull over. I do however think however that you manage stories about episodes in their lives with great sensitivity and in your skilled way only really allude to the true turmoil beneath. Carry on as you are. Thanks for linking. #TweensTeensBeyond

Thank you for the endorsement, Jo. It really is an awkward one, to not really give much away in terms of specifics. And as you say, the raw experiences are the ones we could easily write about at great length, and we can all relate to them, but it’s precisely where we have to retreat into into discretion and allusion.

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Hi, I’m Blogger Dad Enda. I used to blog mainly on family matters, but my kids are teens now, so I rarely mention them now. But I have opinions and thoughts on all sorts of things! Email me at endas1896@gmail.com